HardWired - Upgrades and general build diary

[daveimi]

You're robot is awesome and a million times better than mine! Mine is a chopping board with a 50cm length of inch box section bolted to it! I built the whole thing in the end of the kitchen on a work mate and the back step (much to the mrs' disgust). Just get it running and we can have our own bash around class! lol. Please look at my robots there so rubbish but such a giggle to drive! My drive motors sit an inch out of line with each other and at different angles! I have plans to hammer a pieces of ally into a top cover and to get to one of these non spinner events I make stuff from bits I find randomly!

[Flag Captured]

But, how will you develop engineering experience without experiencing the act of engineering? I can relate to the lack of tooling, but perhaps the money you can save could go towards improving your tools situation, which gives you the whole second dimension of custom building your machines. Buying all off the shelf will get boring eventually, and if you spend your savings on expensive parts, you still won't be able build your own parts later down the line. Spending a bit on tooling up gives you access to both worlds.

Also for the record, the above images of Hardwired look as good as any first machine, please finish it!

It's just the space, I don't have enough room to have tools like pillar/heavier duty drills and all that... I would do if I could, but it's just a difficult one. I'm trying to find if there's anywhere I can go to use tools such as these (hopefully when I get to Uni they'll allow me to use any facilities they do have) but for the minute, there's not a whole lot I can do.

Thanks! Hardwired will get finished, that's for certain, but I don't want to do much more with it until I can do a really good job of it, even more so with me adding in that 5.5 kg spinner on the back of it... I've realised that I don't have as much power in the drive as I'd like, nor is it the most well armoured of machines, so the best form of defense is offense as the saying doesn't go. Besides, I wanted to make something a little bit more exciting than all the previous incarnations of HardWired!

You're robot is awesome and a million times better than mine! Mine is a chopping board with a 50cm length of inch box section bolted to it! I built the whole thing in the end of the kitchen on a work mate and the back step (much to the mrs' disgust). Just get it running and we can have our own bash around class! lol. Please look at my robots there so rubbish but such a giggle to drive! My drive motors sit an inch out of line with each other and at different angles! I have plans to hammer a pieces of ally into a top cover and to get to one of these non spinner events I make stuff from bits I find randomly!

It's not! It's plagued with issues, is old HardWired! I am making a wood bot though with some bits of scrap that's laying about, so we can definitely still do the bash around class haha! Also making a great big plywood bar spinner, just for the sheer hilarity of seeing it explode into a thousand pieces! I can deal with wood quite easily, because it's a lot weaker than metal (obviously!) but that's no good for what I'm intending to build for the championships. Maybe it'll get done, but I don't think so at this rate... a friend's building me a slightly smaller version of HardWired Evolution in stainless steel to accommodate the spinning disc, but that's going to take a while to get sorted too, so I have no idea how that's going to go!

Problem is, I need about £100 for speed controllers, another £40 on batteries, about £120 on brushless motors and a good £40's worth of bearings to even get the thing running how I'd like, not to mention the new 18v/24v drive system, wheels, and drive belts... its going to take a lot to save up for it now :/

The design's evolved to a state that I literally don't have space for much more than a battery, two ESCs two motors and the brushless system - I need it small so that I can use steel and it not be too thinly spread for armour, but big enough to get the spinning disc in the machine. It'll take engineering way beyond what I'm capable of...

[daveimi]

Most of us just starting have some sort of simple drill powered box, you could just try something simple for now just to get competing? It's only cheap etc.

[Flag Captured]

I suppose so, but that's all HardWired really was, I want to do something a bit more interesting... Not saying that drill boxes are bad or anything, but I'd much prefer having something with a weapon. Gearing down a fan motor to a lifting mechanism is always an option I suppose.

[RoboLibre]

Both motors do from time to time, it seems like they're just losing power until I return the stick either side to netural...

It's not both at once though, they're completely independent when they do cut out if you get me

Is it 2 escs your running, and is that on the 4s lipo you mentioned?
if not, what battery are you using?

also what mixer are you using?

I'm running the same escs in the robot I'm building atm, so know the circuitry like the back of my hand now after the hicups they've been having haha
great escs once you work out the quirks though! (gives thanks to Plargen)

[Flag Captured]

It is, 2 ESCs (one per motor) on a 5000mah 4S Turnigy Lipo, as for the mixer it's just done on my Giant Cod transmitter, it's one of those £25 ones!

I do have some photos of the circuitry I meant to post a short while ago,
IMG_0427[1].jpgIMG_0425[1].jpg

Sorry about the dreadful quality, but it's the best I can get

[RoboLibre]

Cheers for the pics of the ESC... It doesn't look like anything is out of place from what I an see in the pictures... there are some solder flows that are in quite close proximity, but although not ideal, I doubt they are deal breaking

take a pic of the caps "two cylindrical components that look a bit like batteries" that are by the cables, as that's the only bit I can't see.

How are the wires for the ESCs, the battery, the motors, being connected?
a pic or some pics of it all wired up would be useful

do you have a multimeter?

also what is the discharge rating of your lipo?

[Flag Captured]

Sure! I'll get one of those tomorrow... The soldering did look a bit dodgy in places, but I think it must be something with the components themselves or as Plargen said in that other thread about them, the software... if it's either of those I don't think there's much that can be done! I'll reconnect everything up too, just got some thicker wiring so I'll see if that makes any changes.

I do have a multimetre, and the discharge rating I think is about 30C and it's about 5000mah so it should easily handle both motors amp-wise I think

[Flag Captured]

Done some slight redesigning of HardWired again too, still aiming for a disc of about 5.5-6 kg (which I know is complete overkill, but that's more fun) but now I'm going for hopefully some kind of hardox strength steel for a baseplate to mount a 360/HypnoDisc style axle for the disc instead of trying to mount it between two thick bulkheads above and below the machine, mainly because I can then just put some weaker (but hopefully impact resistant) armour on top. Just solves a few issues I had previously with the design (weight related, mostly).
Taken a fair few design cues from 360 and Hypnodisc actually, thinking about it... I'll get the sketches uploaded some point this week.

Obviously, this design's going to take a long time to get the money for (can't even afford speed controllers for the current HardWired) but if I can iron out the creases for the next version, it saves a bit of time when I do have the money I suppose. Especially figuring out when/where I can get different parts cut and all, and getting a decent disc designed!

[daveimi]

I imagine this will be hard to build unless your good with CNC etc.